From Shirts to Strategy: Exec’s Climb at Amazon & Coursera

Lessons from **Bezos** Shape New Education Tech Leadership

From folding clothes at Nordstrom to heading education platform Coursera, **Greg Hart’s** career trajectory is a case study in adaptability. His secret? Embrace learning, even when data clashes with intuition.

The “Shadow” Role

**Hart’s** path accelerated when he joined Amazon in the late 90s. By 2009, he became technical advisor to **Jeff Bezos**, a position known internally as “the shadow,” akin to a chief of staff.

Now CEO of Coursera, **Hart** aims to revolutionize edtech, guided by lessons learned from the world’s third-richest person. His key takeaway involves trusting instincts, even when data suggests otherwise.

One of the things that **Jeff** would regularly say is when the data and the anecdotes don’t align, trust the anecdotes,” **Hart** tells Fortune. “Because it probably means that you’re either measuring the wrong thing in the data, or that the data is telling you something that you’re just not seeing yet.

—Greg Hart, CEO of Coursera

Alexa’s Genesis

This philosophy proved crucial when **Hart** was selected to spearhead Amazon’s development of Alexa. He hopes to mirror that success at Coursera.

(Coursera) is one of the leaders in the edtech space, certainly,” **Hart** says. “But hasn’t yet achieved what I would call the true breakout success that I was fortunate to have seen when I was at Amazon.

From Idea to Reality

Tasked with turning **Bezos’s** concept for a virtual assistant into reality, **Hart**, despite lacking specific expertise, embraced the challenge.

**Bezos’s** confidence in **Hart** was unwavering. “He (**Bezos**) was unbelievably gracious. He said, ‘you’ll do fine, you’ll figure it out,’” **Hart** recalls.

With over 600 million Alexa devices sold, according to Amazon, **Hart’s** success underscores **Bezos’s** leadership approach: empowering employees and decentralizing decision-making.

Pushing decisions down as close to the customer as possible was certainly something that I learned from **Jeff**,” he explains. “The fewer decisions that have to go to the CEO, the faster the organization will move.”

Coursera’s Path Forward

This agility will be crucial for Coursera, navigating the evolving education landscape, especially concerning AI’s impact on skill development. Statista forecasts the global AI training market to reach $37 billion by 2027, highlighting the urgency for adaptive learning platforms.

Coursera faces market pressures. A key competitor, 2U (owner of edX), filed for bankruptcy last year. Coursera’s stock price remains significantly below its 2022 IPO value.

Yet, with a projected 1 billion new internet users in the next five years, Coursera is positioned to expand its reach. The platform partners with industry giants like **Google**, **Microsoft**, and **IBM**, alongside universities such as Stanford, University of Michigan, and University of Pennsylvania, offering diverse online learning opportunities.

There is a huge opportunity for Coursera, not just to serve all the people who are online today and give them access to world class education so they can transform their lives, but also to do that for the population that will come online,” **Hart** states.

Advice for the Next Generation

For young professionals aiming for career advancement, **Hart** advises prioritizing learning over immediate rewards.

Don’t optimize for titles, don’t optimize for salary, optimize for learning. And if you do that in the long run, it will benefit you,” he says.

This sentiment is echoed by current Amazon CEO **Andy Jassy**. I tried a lot of things, and I think that early on it’s just as important to learn what you don’t want to do as what you want to do, because it actually helps you figure out what you want to do,” **Jassy** added.